"There they are!" Rohan exclaimed, having just found the floorboard he hid his stash of Origin Crystals under.

The shuttle over to Insulus didn’t take long thanks to the convenience of modern technologies, and Rohan soon made his way back to his old apartment. Though, this was curiously going to be the first time he was inviting a friend over — to his old apartment at least.

Despite having some friendships and even a ’girlfriend’ at one point during his school years, Rohan never actually invited them over to his apartment to hang out or anything like that, as young teens did.

He worried that they might look at him differently and start treating him differently if they saw how he lived.

But he had no such worries with Elane now.

They were both Awakened, and she’d already visited his new apartment, so this wasn’t much different.

"Wow, this is so... this..." Elane was unable to find the words to describe Rohan’s old place.

Well, it was more like she couldn’t find any positive words to describe it...

’He really lived like this his entire life?’

Elane felt a little bit of pity, but not much more than that. Even though Elane didn’t know him before he was an Awakened, she could tell that both he and his mindset had changed in the time afterwards.

Something like this wouldn’t affect him, so why should she feel any differently about it? If anything, she treated it more as a learning experience to see how the lower classes of society lived.

"So are you going to start, or what?"

But she soon grew bored of looking at the dull, damp and cramped apartment. With so little space, there was only so much to look at before you’d grow bored.

Rohan waved his hand to shoo Elane away. "Stop hurrying me."

He reached down and picked up the first Origin Crystal of many, feeling its weight in his hand before closing his eyes to concentrate.

Elane watched from opposite with curious excitement.

Once Rohan was finished topping up his energy, she’d finally get to see how he evolved a Genetic Armament to the next tier!

"Woah!" Elane jumped from shock.

The Origin Crystal in Rohan’s hand had just lost all of its colour and crumbled to dust in less than a second since he picked it up!

Elane couldn’t believe what her eyes were witnessing. When coming over to Rohan’s apartment, she was expecting the process of absorbing Origin Crystals to take hours, as common sense dictated that it was impossible to absorb all of the energy contained within one so quickly.

But Rohan had just toppled her entire worldview on that...

"How did you do that..."

Meanwhile, completely ignoring Elane, Rohan opened up his status.

[Name: Rohan Roy]

[Rank: F]

[Talent: Evolution Gene (Normal(F) - 13%, Elite(F) - 14%)]

[Genes: F rank Firestone Skin (Elite)]

[Genetic Armaments: F rank Horned Rabbit Spear (Elite)]

After glancing over at the energy gauge next to his talent, he began to do a few mental calculations.

’So that one Origin Crystal progressed my bar by 13%, and I need 400% in total to upgrade the two Genetic Armaments. Let’s see here...’

He glanced down at the pile of Origin Crystals before him.

’I have 33 Origin Crystals in total, so I should have just enough to cover that.’

Rohan released a breath in indignation, pained by the fact that he would have to use nearly all of his remaining Origin Crystals for evolutions. He glanced over at Elane, silently keeping his complaints to himself.

She paid for the two Genetic Armaments, so it was only right that he contributed in his own way.

Ignoring her continued shock, Rohan continued to absorb more Origin Crystals until he finally hit 100% once again.

"I’m all maxed out now, hand over the first Genetic Armament."

Elane obliged, still getting over the shock of what she’d just witnessed.

’8 Origin Crystals gone in seconds...’

Choosing to be safe, she cautiously handed over one of the Poison Rocksnake Pikes. Contrary to the Hollow Tide Bursts, there was no risk of an explosion when handling it...

As they were still so unfamiliar with how the evolution process worked, neither of them knew whether anything unexpected could crop up as a result of upgrading the Genetic Armaments from Normal tier to Elite tier.

’What was that saying? Oh right: It’s better to be safe than sorry.’

Rohan held the Poison Rocksnake Pike in his hand and didn’t waste any time stalling — upgrading it on the spot.

Elane watched as a faint red light burst out from Rohan’s hand into the Genetic Armament.

In her view, the Poison Rocksnake Pike all of a sudden looked like a thirsty beast, and the moment Rohan’s Origin Energy touched it, the small red orb greedily drank it in.

...And that was all.

"What? Is that it?" She asked, perplexed.

Besides that single flash of light, nothing else occurred. But in Rohan’s view, things were very different.

[Poison Rocksnake Pike (Normal) has evolved to F rank Poison Rocksnake Pike (Elite)]

He could see a mental image of what the Genetic Armament looked like as he was holding it, and unlike the previous occasions where its appearance barely changed compared to its Normal tier counterpart, this time the difference was like night and day.

Before, it was only a single metre in length and a little thin, it’s length had more than tripled and its width had doubled! But aside from that, the biggest change of all was a subtle, but noticeable green tinge to the tip of the pike.

’Poison! It really worked! Evolving it to Elite tier really brought back those poison properties...’

Rohan was over the moon. They’d taken a gamble by choosing this Genetic Armament as their penetrative type, as while its penetrative powers were good, there were a few other items in Stella’s exchange store that were a little better in that regard.

But he saw the potential held within these Poison Rocksnake pikes, and that gamble paid off in the end.

’Now we can be sure of ourselves. If we manage to land a strike with either of these, the effects of the penetration will double thanks to the poison injected within!’

He tossed the newly evolved Genetic Armament over to Elane so that she could get a look at the changes herself.

Neither of them dared to summon it in person, as besides its new size, they were scared of accidentally using it and losing it.

Elane’s reaction mirrored Rohan’s, overwhelmed by the changes to the Poison Rocksnake Pike.